3rd Bomber Arrested in Connection with Pakistan Suicide Attacks
By VOA News
22 August 2008
Pakistani police said they have arrested a suspect who was to have been the third bomber in Thursday's suicide attacks that killed at least 64 people near Islamabad.
Police Friday said they also seized an explosives-packed suicide jacket at a mosque near the country's main weapons complex that was attacked in the town of Wah.
A Taliban spokesman, Maulvi Omar, said the extremist group carried out the bombings in retaliation for military air strikes in the tribal region of Bajaur. He warned of more attacks unless the military stops its operations.
Pakistan's Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik ignored the Taliban's warning and vowed to continue the offensive to establish government control in Bajaur.
Security forces in Pakistan have been engaged in fighting with Taliban and al-Qaida-linked militants in tribal regions along the Afghan border for weeks. More than 500 militants and 22 soldiers have been killed in the offensive, with thousands more people displaced by the violence.
The Pakistani military continued its offensive in Bajaur Friday, with at least four militants killed along the Afghan border.
Elsewhere in the country's northwest, security officials say troops killed at least 16 militants in a clash near the town of Hangu in North West Frontier Province. Military officials say militants refused to surrender at a military checkpoint and fled, prompting soldiers to open fire at their vehicle. The vehicle then blew up.
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